Countries are starting to get into the patent business; countries like France and South Korea are setting up patent entities to protect domestic companies. "Intellectual Discovery presents itself as a defensive alliance: if a South Korean company finds itself targeted in a lawsuit, for instance, it can access the patents being compiled by Intellectual Discovery to hit back." I support this. If, say, a small Dutch company were to come under unfair patent aggression by bullies like Apple and Microsoft (quite likely these days), I damn well expect my government to protect them from it. If you can't fix the system, work with it. As simple as that.

However, if I knew I could be paid $500-$1K by the government when I wrote a new unique algorithm for a particular code context, I'd just have to write a few algorithms a month to make a decent income.

But you DON'T know. There's no guarantee under that system. You're not paid just for submitting something. Just because you write a new unique algorithm doesn't mean it has any economic worth that justifies a taxpayer funded system paying for it.

If you did that, you'd have wasted a lot of time developing a new unique algorithm that ended up not getting accepted. The opportunity cost is simply too high for anyone to make a decent living from it. Not even for large companies because they risk wasting time on developing an algorithm that's already been implemented somewhere else.

Most importantly, that a lot of people seem to miss, is that if the taxpayer is funding the system directly, do you think algorithms and design would be accepted as inventions any more? I, as a taxpayer, certainly don't want my system funding such non-inventions. It further removes a whole category of submissions.

Of course, but that's precisely the point I'm trying to make, the overhead costs of doing a thorough validation in the beginning can only go up. In many cases the government would end up paying the patent clerks more than the research is even worth. How is this justifiable?

I disagree that it will go up. It will go down as submissions are reduced. See above why I think the system would cause that to happen.

"Get the taxpayers involved, and you'll get the protests. Think about how conservatives rant about teachers being paid too much. Think about how much scrutiny a publicly funded system would get and how much crap companies are going to get for applying for rounded corner patents?"

These are the reasons your proposal could never be accepted in the first place. If it already existed, it would be the first on the chopping block because paying devs for patents with public funds isn't really something that benefits the public.

Don't resort to "it will never get accepted" argument. That's not the point of a thought experiment.

"Society pays a lot more right now with the current system."

Today's patent system is high cost, little public benefit. Your proposal eliminates many of the negatives, but other than that it still doesn't give much public benefit. It makes more sense to drop the system all together and not have any associated costs at all. The majority of devs wouldn't loose any benefits since we're already avoiding patents as much as we can today.

It does give the public benefit, because inventions are now cheaper to licence: $0. It gives the public benefit because inventions are no longer encumbered with licencing costs. More innovation is allowed to happen because startups aren't under the threat of patent litigation. Patent litigation can't even exist in that system because there's no such thing as infringement or licencing.

It has all the benefits of dropping patents, but providing just enough incentives for inventors who otherwise wouldn't open their inventions in order to get compensated. I'm not only focusing on up front costs, but the hidden costs to society as well.

It doesn't make sense to drop the system all together because it has even less chance of happening than my proposed system getting accepted. You can't argue that my system won't get accepted as a weakness and then propose an even less likely proposal.

"Most importantly, that a lot of people seem to miss, is that if the taxpayer is funding the system directly, do you think algorithms and design would be accepted as inventions any more? I, as a taxpayer, certainly don't want my system funding such non-inventions. It further removes a whole category of submissions."

This makes no sense to me, taxpayers are never consulted over implementation of law, what influence will they have over bad patents? If algorithms and designs are bad to patent, then they should be banned in the new system.

"Don't resort to 'it will never get accepted' argument. That's not the point of a thought experiment."

ok, so: in the thought experiment, it will never be accepted

"It does give the public benefit, because inventions are now cheaper to licence: $0. It gives the public benefit because inventions are no longer encumbered with licencing costs."

Relative to today, it decreases the harm done by patents, but it does nothing to increase the public benefits over today. I still don't see why the public should pay a fortune in return for so little public benefit?

I prefer to let the public reward developers by free market principals rather than force us to pay taxes into a patent system in which our votes are lost.

"More innovation is allowed to happen because startups aren't under the threat of patent litigation. Patent litigation can't even exist in that system because there's no such thing as infringement or licencing."

Again, the elimination of legal threats is a good thing, but I'm trying to understand your system in terms of what benefit it gives the public. IE, why would a virgin society who had no patent system want to implement your proposal?

"It has all the benefits of dropping patents, but providing just enough incentives for inventors who otherwise wouldn't open their inventions in order to get compensated."

This benefit is sometimes cited by people outside of the field, but for actual developers the technical information disclosed in patents is worthless compared to the wealth of information we have online these days or could derive ourselves.

"It doesn't make sense to drop the system all together because it has even less chance of happening than my proposed system getting accepted. You can't argue that my system won't get accepted as a weakness and then propose an even less likely proposal."

I think there's both unlikely, but at least dropping the patent system is free and the consensus among devs is in favor of no patents for software.